Satan's Slumber Party
by hxchick
Summary: What happens when Dave's daughter Katie throws a slumber party? Based on real events from ilovetvalot's life. Multi-chapter, set in the 'Family Ties' Universe. OC
1. Chapter 1

_Satan's Slumber Party-Chapter 1_

**~This story is set in the 'Family Ties' Universe, and it is set in the down time between chapters 24 and 25 of that story.**

**I know, I have NO business starting a new story when I have so many others that I haven't updated in awhile! That being said, this one came to me after a discussion with ilovetvalot about her daughter's slumber party and I realized I HAD to write it! I don't envision this story being more than about 5 chapters and it's going to be mostly fluff.**

**~Again, thanks to ilovetvalot! This story is based on her recent real-life slumber party experience.**

**~Be sure to check out this week's featured Author of the Week at the CCOAC forum. **

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David Rossi looked up from his desk when he heard a knock on his open office door and was surprised to see his boss standing in the doorway.

"Is there something I can do for you, Erin?" While the two were former lovers and shared a child…a child that Erin was slowly acknowledging and warming up to, the two did not communicate directly unless they absolutely had to. Things weren't as bad between them as it once was, but it still wasn't the greatest relationship on the planet.

"I'm sorry David, but I heard something about you and I have to confirm the accuracy of the story. Is it true you're letting Katie have a slumber party tomorrow night?" The Section Chief asked with a twinkle in her eye. The very idea of the legendary profiler surrounded by a dozen screaming teenagers was enough to put a very large grin on her face; a grin she'd forced herself to wipe off before knocking on his office door.

"You heard right, Erin," Dave said as he scribbled his signature across the bottom of a completed file. "She's been bugging me to have one for awhile now and I figure with all that's happened in the past couple of months, she's due for some fun."

"And _you're _going to chaperone this get together of young teens?" She asked as she took a seat in one of the chairs across from his desk.

"Well it's either that or let them fend for themselves and since I don't think many parents would like that…yes, I'm chaperoning the shindig," he told her with irritation in his voice. He knew he had to be civil toward her for their daughter's sake but there was only so much ribbing he would take from his former lover before he threw her out the window.

Thankfully, while Strauss was not a profiler, she'd been around Dave enough to know his moods and she could tell his was slowly turning into a bad one, so she kept fought the large grin that continued to threaten to take over her face and she attempted to school her features into a somewhat professional expression. "David, do you know what to expect at a slumber party?"

"Sure," he said, shrugging. "They come to the house, eat some pizza, giggle about boys, play a few games, watch a movie and then go to sleep. How hard can it be?"

"Oh you poor, delusional bastard," she said softly as her head shook from side to side. "Dave, normally a slumber party doesn't have much to do with actually _slumbering_. The girls will stay up as late as they can, which may mean all night, and they'll take over the entire house. Not only will there be loud laughter, there will be truth or dare, pranks, makeovers, the ingestion of large amounts of food and dozens of other things you've never experienced before. Believe me, one cannot over prepare for a teenage slumber party."

"Oh, for Christ's sake Erin, you're making it sound like a war zone!"

"A war zone is probably quieter and much less frenzied," she shot back, not joking. She had experienced slumber parties both as a teen herself and with her eldest daughter Ellen. Thankfully Ellen had grown out of them but Clara was just entering the age where they seemed to happen every weekend and once Clara was done with them, it would be Allie's turn. By her calculations, Erin still had another eight or nine years before she was safely out of the 'slumber party era' with her girls and she couldn't wait.

Dave snorted at her response, "You know what? I've gone head to head with arsonists, rapists and serial killers; I think I can handle a group of twelve and thirteen year olds."

Once again the section chief just sadly shook her head. She was about to say something else when there was a knock on his door. "Hey bossman," Garcia said as she entered the office, not bothering to wait for an invite. "Here are those files you asked-oh! Chief Strauss! I didn't know you were in here…I didn't mean to interrupt anything."

"You didn't, Penelope," Dave said as he took the files from her. "Erin was just trying to rattle me about Katie's sleepover this weekend." The technical analyst eyed the section chief warily; while she knew Strauss was trying to get to know Katie better and be a part of her life, she was very protective of the teenager and until she proved herself, she would never fully trust Erin's actions.

"Please tell me you're going to be there, Garcia," Strauss said. To her dismay, the woman shook her brightly colored head.

"No ma'am, he's on his own for this one," Garcia said as a mischievous smile over took her face. "I have to go out of town this weekend, so it's just going to be Dave and eight teenagers."

"Good God you two," Dave said in exasperation, "I'll be _fine_! I know my daughter and things are _not _going to get too crazy and if I need help, I have Hotch on speed dial." There were simultaneous snorts as both women tried to imagine the straight laced Aaron Hotchner helping out in a situation that involved almost a dozen teenage girls.

"Can I offer you one piece of advice sir?" Garcia asked rhetorically. "Sleep with one eye open this weekend."

"That is _excellent _advice Penelope," Erin agreed, nodding her head emphatically. "You'll want to know what they're doing at all times."

"Why is that?" Dave asked. He had planned to hunker down in his study while Katie had her party. That way he would be close enough if they needed anything, but far enough away so he could watch various sporting events on the television he kept in the room.

"Because once they get bored with each other, they'll turn on you!" Garcia told him with a cackle.


	2. Chapter 2

Satan's Slumber Party-Chapter 2

**~We have some new postings over at the Chit Chat on Author's Corner forum! Be sure to check out our featured Author of the Week, Ren Kayshima. Also be sure to sign up for our April 'Original Character' challenge and check out our new OC thread.**

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"Good Lord, Katie!" Dave exclaimed as he and his daughter unloaded the back of the SUV. They were returning home from a night at Costco, a night where they had filled a cart full of junk food for her slumber party. "How many people are coming tomorrow night?"

"Seven," she replied as she grabbed one of many large, reusable grocery bags that she'd brought along on their shopping trip.

"Seven? You're sure about that? You're sure there aren't going to be _seventy_?" He teased, "Because we just bought enough food to feed a Marine battalion."

The teen rolled her eyes as she grabbed another bag and struggled under the weight of it. "You're exaggerating again, dad," she told him as she waited for him to unlock the door that led into the house. As soon as he did, Mudgie bounded out to greet them…well, not so much them as the food they'd bought. Because the dog was so large, his excited dancing blocked the way into the house.

"Excuse me, Mudgie," Katie said politely but the dog didn't listen; instead he tried to barrel past them so he could investigate the items still left in the SUV. "Mudgie, 'scuse," she tried again as she felt the bags grow heavier in her arms.

Dave, who was also carrying numerous grocery bags, just rolled his eyes and shoved the dog with his legs. "Mudgie, get the hell out of the way before we drop this stuff!" He loved that when she was in a hurry, Katie could shove past him without a word, but the dog received a polite request to move out of the way.

Mudgie gave an affronted huff as he was bodily moved out of the way, but Katie reassured him as they entered the house. "Don't worry boy, we got some food for you too." She dropped the volume of her voice as she continued, "I even managed to slip some of those really good treats into the cart."

"Yeah you did," her dad said as he set his bags down on the kitchen table and then reached for hers. "That dog eats better than three-quarters of the world's population."

"He's part of the family," she argued as they returned to the garage to bring in the next load of groceries. "He needs the good stuff." The chocolate lab chuffed in agreement as they loaded up their arms with the rest of the contents from the SUV.

Once inside, Katie put everything away while Dave fed Mudgie. He couldn't help but smile when the dog did his 'happy circle dance' as he opened the new bag of food and poured a scoop in his dish. For some reason, the lab became very excited every time he cracked open a new bag of kibble. Dave wasn't exactly sure why, since the dog had been eating the exact same food for five years, but who was he to dampen the dog's excitement over something so minor?

About ten minutes into their supper, Katie began talking about her slumber party again. "Can you help me move some of the furniture tomorrow before everyone gets here?"

"What are we moving the furniture for?"

"We need room to spread out our sleeping bags," she told him as she surreptitiously slipped Mudgie some of her bread crusts.

"I saw that," her dad told her. "I think now is a good time to go over the rules for this shindig,"

"RULES?" Katie exclaimed through a mouth full of ham sandwich. "What rules?"

"These rules," Dave started. "First, no drinking of ANY kind."

"Well duh, dad," the teen said with a roll of her eyes. "I don't even like that stuff anyway." He'd let her have a sip of his beer about a year ago and she'd gagged and nearly thrown up at the taste of it.

"Second," Dave continued, saying a silent thanks to the big man in the sky that Katie didn't like alcohol; hopefully that would stay with her until she graduated from college. "No crank calls. No ordering pizzas to other people's houses, no playing jokes on other people, nothing. Got it?"

"Crank calls? You can't even do that anymore," she told him. "Everyone has caller ID nowadays. Maybe _you_ were able to do that back in the time of tin cans and strings-"

"Hey, no age jokes!" Dave said with mock gruffness.

"Sorry dad," Katie said with a smile. "But you won't have to worry about crank calls."

"Good," he said. "Third, I want everyone in bed by midnight-"

"MIDNIGHT!" Katie repeated incredulously. "Daaaaad, no one has a bedtime at a slumber party! The whole point is to try to stay up all night!"

"I don't want to send seven sleepless kids back to their parents," he said firmly.

"But…but if you make us go to bed that early, no one will ever want to come to another party of mine again! Plus, I won't be _invited _to any other parties! I'll be a social piranha!"

"The word is pariah," Dave corrected, biting back a smile at his daughter's dramatics.

"You don't understand!" She practically wailed, "Slumber parties are about having fun and staying up all night, not going to bed like a bunch of little kids. _Please_ don't set a bedtime for my party," she begged.

Damn, she was looking at him with her teary puppy dog eyes, how was he supposed to say no when she looked at him like that? He thought for a second and remembered what Erin had said about slumber parties not involving much slumbering and he knew he had to abandon his plans of having a quiet house past midnight. "Fine," he said. "You don't have to actually go to bed at midnight, but I want all of you to be in your sleeping bags and the house to be fairly quiet by that time, deal?"

Katie screwed up her face in thought, "How about three o'clock? That way we'll have been up for most of the night and I won't look like a complete loser."

"One o'clock," Dave countered.

"Two," Katie shot back.

Dave quirked his left eyebrow at her. "How about eleven?" He threatened. If she thought she was going to out negotiate him, she was in for one hell of a rude awakening. Seeing as her normal bedtime on the weekends was eleven, he felt generous offering her two extra hours and even then he wasn't making them go to sleep, he just wanted things to quiet down.

"No, no," she said quickly, "One o'clock is fine, but we don't have to actually go to sleep, right? We just have to settle down by one?"

"Yup," he said. "Next rule; no R rated movies." Katie nodded at that; she wasn't allowed to watch them anyway and neither were most of her friends, so that wasn't a problem. "Also, no leaving the house for any reason, not even to go into the backyard. We're going to have a lot of people here and I don't want to lose track of anyone."

"That's fine," she agreed, knowing that most of the rules, other than his bogus 'settle down time' were standard at most of the sleepovers she'd been to.

"I'll also be spending the night down here, but I'll crash in my study," he said and wasn't surprised when she opened her mouth to protest. "That might seem overprotective, but I want you girls to be safe and my study is on the other side of the kitchen, so I won't be in close proximity to the living room." He knew he didn't have to sleep in his study, but with all he'd seen in his line of work, he lived by the phrase 'better safe than sorry' when it came to his daughter and with that many teenage girls in one place, the party was ripe for something bad to happen.

"But daaaaaad," she whined, about to argue with him again but she saw him resolutely shake his head and she knew she wouldn't get her way on this rule.

"This point is not negotiable; I either sleep in my study or I set up a cot in the kitchen. Which would you rather have?"

"The study," she grumbled, "But you won't actually come in the living room unless you're invited, right?"

"I won't come in after one o'clock," he told her, "But I might pop in from time to time before then just to make sure you girls are all right."

"Fine," Katie said with a theatrical sigh. There were times she hated her father's over protectiveness and this was definitely one of them, but it was better than not having a slumber party at all.


	3. Chapter 3

Satan's Slumber Party-Chapter 3

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The next evening, Dave stocked the fridge with soda while Katie made the living room slumber party ready. They had both moved the sofa and other large pieces of furniture to the periphery of the room in order to make room for the many sleeping bags that would be spread out on the floor and then Katie had brought numerous pillows down from the second floor. Derek had loaned her his X-Box, so she had hooked that up to the plasma screen TV and she'd set out various controllers and dance mats. Finally, she brought her iPod dock and player down from her bedroom and began creating playlists for the night while sitting at the breakfast bar in the kitchen.

"So what do you think, should I put more Ke$ha in the mix, or just stick with Lady Gaga?" She asked her dad, who had finished stocking the fridge with soda and was making some French onion dip to go with the many bags of potato chips they had picked up.

"I have no idea what you're talking about, Belle," he said as he mixed the packet of soup into the sour cream. "Just no rap or heavy metal."

The teen rolled her eyes. "Duh dad, do you even _know_ me? When have I ever listened to that stuff?"

Dave just shrugged; most of the crap she listened to was just noise to him. What happened to the good old days when performers had to actually be _good _at singing? It seemed those days were long gone. "And nothing too loud past ten o'clock, remember we have neighbors." Dave and Katie lived in a luxurious townhouse and, while they had a corner unit, they shared a common wall with their next door neighbors. Thankfully, the soundproofing was very good but he didn't want to push it with them.

"Daaaaad! You said we didn't have to calm down until one!"

"And you don't have to, but the music gets turned down at ten," he told her firmly. She was about to argue with him further when the doorbell rang.

"Someone's here!" She exclaimed as she dashed to the front door to greet her first guest. Soon after, the rest of the girls arrived and every parent came in to meet him and to make sure that he wasn't some creepy guy intent on taking advantage of their daughters. Dave didn't hold that against them; truth be told, he'd probably be a little nervous if Katie was going to a slumber party where the only chaperone was a male, but after he'd made idle conversation with the parents and shown them his FBI credentials, they all seemed to relax and they trusted him enough to leave their daughters in his care. After the last parent left, he closed the front door and made his way back to the living room where he stood in shock and amazement. In the fifteen minutes from when the first girl had arrived to when the last parent left, Katie and her friends had managed to make his nice, neat, _organized _living room into a suburban war zone! There were sleeping bags and pillows laid haphazardly on the floor, there were open and overflowing duffel bags everywhere he looked and there were magazines, DVD's and cell phones scattered on just about every flat surface. Not only that, it looked as though they had found every can of soda and every bag of chips in the house and had brought them into the room.

He cleared his throat and got everyone's attention. "Okay then, I'll leave you girls to do whatever it is you do at slumber parties. I'll be in my study if you need anything." He turned to leave but, to his surprise, his daughter called out to stop him.

"Wait dad, we were just going to start playing Dance, Dance Revolution; you should play too!"

"How do you play it?" He asked as he stood in the doorway with a smile on his face; he'd never expected to be invited to some of the festivities.

"We'll show you how, Mr. Rossi," Katie's friend Sarah told him. He watched as she and another girl danced around on the mats that were synced to the video game. As he watched the next set of teens dance around, he realized that the game told them where to step on the mats. It didn't look too hard, so he took the next turn with Katie… and that's when he knew the night was not going to be an easy one.

xxxxxxxxxx

"Hotchner," Dave heard the other end of the voice say as he answered his phone.

"Aaron, it's Dave; I need a huge favor!"

"What's wrong Dave?"

"Katie's having a slumber party tonight," Dave told him, "And apparently the most popular pizza place in town is having some delivery issues…specifically, they aren't able to deliver tonight; it seems that their two delivery guys crashed into each other while pulling out of the parking lot. Can you pick up the pizzas and bring them over here?"

"Wait, wait, wait. _You're_ chaperoning a sleepover?" Hotch asked, laughing hard on his end as he pictured the legendary profiler surrounded by tweens.

"Yeah asshole," he hissed, "I am. So are you going to help a friend out, or what?"

"Can't you run out and pick them up?" Hotch suggested, not wanting to leave the coziness of his living room. He'd just put in a Disney movie for Jack and the two Hotchner men were relaxing on the sofa.

"Sure Aaron, I'll just leave 8 thirteen year olds alone in my house and then pray that I have a home to come back to. And then I'll face the eight sets of parents in the morning; it's not like they were nervous enough leaving their precious daughters in the care of a guy all night, I'm sure my leaving them alone would go over _great _with them."

"Okay, I get it," Hotch replied. "But why not just get the pizza from another place?"

Dave sighed, "I thought of that too, but apparently slumber party pizza _has_ to come from Mama Rosita's pizza parlor. If you do this for me, I'll add a ham and pineapple pizza to the order for you and Jack."

Aaron, who had been planning on just throwing some fish sticks and tater tots in the oven for dinner, found his mouth watering at the idea of a Hawaiian pizza. "Okay Dave, put in the order and we'll bring it over."

"Thanks man," Dave said gratefully. "You just saved me from being mobbed by eight angry girls."

xxxxxxxxxx

Forty-five minutes later, the doorbell rang at the Rossi residence. "The pizza's here!" All of the girls screeched simultaneously. As Dave made his way from his study to the kitchen, he wondered if they had managed to crack the windows with the pitch of their voices.

Hotch and Jack, who were standing on the porch, were both startled when the front door opened and revealed all of the hyper girls at once. "Aaron, thank you_ so _much for getting the pizzas!" Katie exclaimed as she grabbed one of the boxes from him. Soon his arms were empty as the kids raced into the house with the precious food.

"That's a lot of girls, daddy," Jack whispered wide-eyed as he clutched his father's hand and walked into the kitchen with him.

"You ain't kidding, Jack," Dave said wryly as the three men stood in the doorway to the room and watched as the girls tore into the pizza. "Hey, save some Hawaiian pizza for our delivery men please," Dave said loudly over the chattering and giggling.

"Okay dad," Katie said and then looked at Jack. "Hey Jumping Jack, wanna eat with us in the living room?"

Jack was torn; he didn't know if he really wanted to be with the noisy girls, but he knew his dad and Dave would discuss boring, grown-up things while they ate. After a minute of indecision, he looked at Katie and nodded. "Can I daddy?" He asked.

"What are you girls watching in there?" Aaron asked Katie.

"Just some Simpson's episodes," she told him. Hotch thought for a second and then nodded his permission; while the Simpsons wasn't as tame as SpongeBob SquarePants, it wasn't too bad and he knew Jack would mostly watch just for the cartoon aspect of the show, not for the actual dialogue.

As soon as the girls and Jack had their food, they went back into the living room, leaving Dave and Hotch by themselves. "So are we going to talk about why you're limping?" Aaron finally asked as he polished off a slice of pizza.

"It's that Goddamn video game of Morgan's…you know, that dance one? Anyway, Katie invited me into the living room to try it out and, like an idiot, I took her up on her offer. The first song was pretty slow, but then one of those sweet looking little girls put on a faster song and…well, I threw out my knee and as I went down, I swear I heard a pop in my hip."

"That's awful, Dave," Hotch said, trying to hide his amused grin behind his can of soda. It didn't work.

"I'm glad you find my injury so amusing, asshole," he grumped as he took a huge bite of his own pizza. "It's gonna be real comfortable sleeping on the sofa in my study tonight with an aching knee and a stiff hip."

"You're sleeping down here?"

"Well I'm sure as hell not gonna let them all stay down here by themselves," Dave told him. "With all that we've seen?"

"True," Hotch conceded. It was hard enough letting Jack out of his sight for more than a few minutes but he knew if he had a daughter, he wouldn't let her leave the house without an armed escort. It wasn't a sexist thing, he just knew that most predators preferred girls over boys.

A few loud screeches and giggles reached their ears and Dave sighed. "Christ Aaron, where do they get all of their energy from? I heard them talking about watching movies, playing more games, doing makeovers-that's another thing, they're going to do makeovers on each other! I don't let Katie wear makeup, do you think I should put a stop to that?"

"Only if you want to come out of that room limping worse than you already are," his friend told him. "My advice is to just go with it; if she tries wearing the stuff out of the house then you'll have to stop it, but as long as they're doing it here, it shouldn't be a huge deal."

"I just don't understand it," Dave said. "When my buddies crashed at my house, we would sneak a few beers out of my dad's fridge in the garage, watch a movie and usually pass out in front of it; it wasn't a whole production!"

"Times have changed, Dave and it's different with girls, they-" The rest of Hotch's sentence was cut off by Jack, who ran screaming into the kitchen.

"My hair, daddy! Those girls put barrettes in my hair!" He squealed while he tried yanking the numerous, ribboned barrettes from his tresses. "And _then_ they came at me with makeup!" He tattled with a shudder as he jumped onto his father's lap and threw his arms around him. "Save me!"

"Leave the boy alone, Katie!" Dave called out. "If you want to practice your skills on someone, practice on Mudgie." The dog, who had been dozing in the corner, lifted his head up suddenly in alarm, as if to say, "What the hell?"

"That's a great idea dad!" The teen said as she came into the kitchen and collected the barrettes from Jack. "Come on Mudgie!" The eighty pound lab had a panicked look in his eye and didn't move a muscle; it was as if he knew what was going to happen to him. "Come ON Mudgie!" Katie ordered more forcefully and, reluctantly, the dog got into a standing position. As soon as his paws hit the linoleum, Katie literally dragged him into the living room. He shot one more look at his master and it was a look that was somewhere between 'Save me' and 'Sleep with one eye open tonight, asshole.'

"On that note," Hotch said, standing up with his son still in his arms, "We'd better get going; I have to watch out for my son."

"Coward," Dave said as he hobbled his way to the front door to see them out.

"Good luck tonight, Dave," his friend said with a grin, "Because I have a feeling you're going to need it."

"Yeah, thanks man," Dave replied and then shut the door behind them. Taking a deep breath, he made his way back to the kitchen, where the girls had gathered for second helpings of pizza and chips. As soon as he entered the room, all conversation stopped and eight sets of eyes stared at him. That was actually worse than the non-stop giggling and chattering because the silence was almost maniacal in nature...they were plotting something, but he wasn't sure what. As he looked around the room at the teenage girls, he thought to himself, 'Hell is empty and all of the devils are here.'


	4. Chapter 4

Satan's Slumber Party-Chapter 4

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Five hours later, David Rossi nearly fell into the jury rigged bed in his study, if one could call an old leather sofa a bed. He realized he had no one but himself to blame for his sleeping accommodation; he was the one who had insisted on sleeping on the same floor of the house as his daughter and her seven friends, but after a night of video games (and subsequent injuries), more giggling than he'd ever heard in his life and constantly refreshing the junk food he put out for said girls, he was exhausted and he looked forward to sleep.

As he lay his head on his pillow, he realized he could hear the girls talking in the other room…he could hear them clearly, as in, everything they were saying. Knowing that Katie probably wouldn't want him to overhear some of the things they were discussing, he almost put his pillow over his head to block out their voices, but at the last minute he decided not to. With everything that had happened over the past few months; finding out Erin was her real mother, Erin being a bitch to her and then suddenly wanting to have a relationship with her, the bone marrow transplant and Hailey dying, he wasn't one hundred percent sure how well she was handling all of it and he knew this was the one opportunity he would have to really hear how well she was coping; not only with what life had thrown her, but with life in general. Was it sneaky? Sure, but he doubted there was a father alive who wouldn't take advantage of a similar situation.

He stared at the ceiling and listened to the girls chatter. They were playing a game of 'truth or dare' but none of them seemed to be too daring and it had pretty much turned into a game of truth. The first thing they discussed were their current crushes.

"You know the new kid, Jeremy," Katie asked her friends, somewhat shyly.

"The one who is in the advanced math class?" Her friend Ashley asked.

Katie nodded, "I think he's really cute, plus he's funny and smart and he's really nice."

"Is that why he's been sitting at our lunch table?" Maddie asked with a grin; while they had all admitted to having various crushes on boys in their class, Katie was the only one who had actually done something about hers.

"Yeah, he looked lonely on his first day so I invited him to sit with me and then…"

"And then you thought he was hot, so you kept inviting him," her best friend Kayla finished.

Katie just nodded. "You should totally ask him out," another friend, Amanda, said.

"Um, hello? I'm only thirteen," Katie responded.

"So?" Amanda asked.

"I'm sorry, have you met my father? The guy who is so protective, he's sleeping in a nearby room just in case anything happens? The man has at least two security systems wired to this house _and_ he carries a gun, yet he wouldn't let us sleep down here alone," she pointed out. "There's no WAY he'll let me go out on a date right now. Heck, I'll be lucky to go on my first date before college!"

'She's got that right,' Dave thought from his position in the nearby room. Part of him was proud of his daughter for realizing that with her young age came certain restrictions but a bigger part of him was horrified that she felt as strongly as she did about a boy in her class. When the hell had THAT happened? Shouldn't she still be playing with dolls and watching cartoons? What happened to the days when she thought boys were yucky? What happened to the daddy's girl who wanted to marry him when she grew up?

He'd hoped to have more time before he had to even acknowledge his daughter's love life…at least until she was thirty, but here she was at thirteen making the moves on a guy. Sure, the moves were subtle, but they were still moves none the less! And he knew this was just the tip of the iceberg. Soon she would want to start dating in groups and then came the school dances and then finally she'd go off with a guy for god knew how log and he would only have a vague clue as to where she was. Nope, not gonna happen, not on his watch. There was no way in HELL that she would go on her first date, group or alone, before she was sixteen and if he had his way, it would be longer.

Before he could work himself into too much of a tizzy, he heard the girls change the topic in the living room. Now they were on to their most embarrassing stories. He heard trauma about boys and periods and siblings, but when it came to Katie's turn, he took a starring role in the story.

"Come on Rossi," Rachel said. "It's your turn."

"Really?" Katie asked sarcastically. "How can my story possibly compare to Missy's experience of getting her period full on while wearing white pants?"

"Yeah, we all know that's horrible, but I'm willing to bet you have one that can compare."

"Weeeellll," she hemmed and hawed as she turned bright red.

"You do!" Rachel insisted. "Now come on, we all told ours!"

"Okay," she agreed and then took a deep breath. "You know how my friend and pseudo-older sister Hailey died a few months ago?" She saw sympathetic nods from everyone. "Well, before school started, she was the one who took me out to get new bras and panties and stuff."

"Mmm hmm," Rachel encouraged when Katie seemed to stop her story.

The youngest Rossi took another breath and continued. "Anyway, a few weeks after she died, I had put a load of laundry in the washing machine but I hadn't started it yet, I wanted to wait until after I'd showered before starting it so the water pressure wouldn't be all messed up while I was washing up. As I was taking my shower, my dad started the washing machine and he accidentally put the water setting at hot/hot…and all four of my bras were in there."

"Did they shrink?" Amanda asked as she stretched out in her sleeping bag.

"Yup, your five year old sister could've worn them," Katie told her. "So I needed new ones but I didn't have a woman to take me shopping."

"What about your bio mom?" Maddie asked.

"She was still being a total bitch to me at that point," Katie said in a low voice; she knew her dad hated when she swore but there was no other word that would've described Erin's behavior at that time. "So after I stopped screaming about my ruined clothes, dad promised to take me shopping for new ones. When I told him that all of my bras were in the laundry load he'd ruined, he turned red, thought for a moment and told me he'd take me anyway."

"Oh God, I would _die _if my dad ever took me shopping for new bras!" Kayla said in a high pitched voice.

"It gets worse," Katie assured them and from his position in the study, Dave frowned. He thought he'd been pretty cool during that particular shopping trip. He'd tried to make it like any other outing to the mall, but apparently he'd screwed it up if she was recounting it as one of her most embarrassing moments. He listened as his daughter continued.

"The next day dad picked me up after school and took me to the mall. We went to the usual stores like the Gap, Forever 21 and Old Navy to replace the clothes he'd shrunk and then, instead of going to Victoria's Secret, he dragged me to Nordstrom's, where the shoppers were about seventy years old and the salespeople were eighty! We went up to the lingerie department and he beelined it to one of the elderly sales associates and told her that I needed a bunch of new bras. Well the saleslady asked me my size and I told her but she looked at me and told me that I was wearing the wrong size. Then she pulled out a measuring tape and proceeded to measure my bra size, right there in front of my dad, God and anyone else who happened to be around."

"No she didn't!" Three of the girls exclaimed loudly and then clapped their hands to their mouth. All of the girls waited a moment to see if their loudness would bring Dave into the room, but after a minute they figured he was still asleep.

"Yeah, she did," Katie continued. "After that, the saleswoman was okay; she asked me what colors I liked and helped me pick out a bunch of bras to try on, but my dad wouldn't shut up! He was right there with me while the lady was bringing over different kinds of bras and he would comment on them like he was helping me pick out a pair of jeans or something! I wanted to yell at him to back off, that I could do this part of the shopping trip on my own, but I was too embarrassed…I just wanted it to be over with. So I finally grabbed the bras she gave me and made my way to the fitting room. I thought that would be the end of it, but no, dad kept calling out from the doorway to the fitting room, asking me if they fit okay and if I needed a different cup size!"

"Good God," another girl, Jane, said with a shudder.

"I know! I wanted to die! I actually prayed for the ground to open up and swallow me whole! Anyway, I tried all of them on quickly, chose the most comfortable one and got a few in a couple of different colors. After that, dad paid for them and we finally left. He walked through the mall like nothing was wrong…like he hadn't just freaking traumatized me! My only saving grace was that no one I know shops at Nordstrom's, so I could still show my face at school."

"Still," Rachel said, shaking her head in horror. "That was rough! Even when I go shopping for bras and underpants with my mom, she makes it a discrete trip."

"I think my dad was trying to show me that shopping for girl stuff with him is no big deal," Katie told them, "But all he did was make it a million times worse."

From his position in the study, Dave shook his head in dismay as he listened to his daughter finish the bra shopping story; she was exactly right, he had tried to be 'cool' during that trip, he wanted her to know that just because she was a girl she didn't have to be ashamed or embarrassed about buying 'girl things.' He'd wanted her to feel like she could come to him about anything; that just because she didn't have a mother it didn't mean that they couldn't acknowledge the parts of her life that were unique because she was a girl. He'd obviously failed at that part.

He remembered that she'd been largely silent on the trip home that evening but when he asked her if anything was wrong, she'd just shaken her head and claimed a headache. Now he knew; now he knew that she'd been quiet because she'd been embarrassed. He wondered, with some unease, how many other times he'd scarred her psyche. As much as he wanted to be the cool…the nonchalant dad, he was going to talk to Garcia in the near future about taking over as the female mentor for his daughter. He would have sat in a guilty silence longer, but he heard the girls talking again and decided to pay attention.

"Jeez Katie, if he was like that about buying some bras, what was he like when you got your period?" Rachel asked.

Dave shuddered as he waited for her reply; God only knew how he might have screwed that up. To his surprise, he heard Katie say, "He was actually pretty cool about that." He gave a sigh of relief as he listened to her tell that story.

"I got it for the first time on a Thursday night; thankfully, before she died, Hailey had the 'becoming a woman' talk with me and she'd gotten me a supply of pads. All night I wondered whether I should tell him or not because, you know, it's not something you exactly broadcast, but I finally decided to let him in on it. The next day, after breakfast I told him and his reaction was…calm. He stared at the table for a minute and then looked up at me and said, 'atta girl!' Like he was congratulating me on some big achievement." Her friends all giggled at that and she continued. "Then he asked if I wanted to have a party to celebrate. I told him no, I definitely did _not_ need a party to celebrate the occasion. I wondered where he got that from, but then I saw an article about those horrible 'period parties' moms sometimes throw for their daughters in one of my magazines and I assumed he'd thumbed through it and caught the same article."

Dave smiled from his room; that's exactly what had happened and, while it had sounded strange to him, he hadn't wanted to deny her a rite of passage.

"I thought it was all behind us after that but when I got home from school that day, I found a basket on my bed and in it was Midol, a heating pad and a bunch of candy bars."

"Awwww, that's so sweet!" Kayla said and the rest of the girls nodded their agreement.

"Do you ever miss having a mom?" Jane asked drowsily as she curled up in her sleeping bag.

Katie thought about that for a minute, and Dave anxiously awaited her response in his room. "No," she finally said. "I mean, I miss my mom, we were really close, but I don't miss just having a mom. Dad and I were close before my mom died and we got even closer after her death. Even with all of the hours he works and all of the times he goes out of town, I know I can go to him for anything; he's never let me down. Even after the whole 'bra buying' incident, I still love the big goof."

As soon as he heard his daughter say those words, a large grin stretched across Dave's face. All he had ever wanted her to know was that he would always be there for her, that she could come to him with anything and he would help her, no matter what and it seemed like she had learned that lesson. As he lay back down on his makeshift bed, he shoved the pillow over his head so he wouldn't hear any more of the girl talk in the other room; morning would come early and he knew he would have eight hungry teens clamoring for breakfast when it did.


	5. Chapter 5

Satan's Slumber Party-Chapter 5

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"Katie, are you awake?" Ashley whispered.

Katie propped herself up on her left elbow and looked across the room at her friend, who was doing the same thing. "Yeah, I'm up; I had wayyyyyyy too much caffeine tonight and now I can't sleep!"

"Me neither," Ashley whispered, "And now I'm bored.

"Me too," Kayla piped up from next to Katie.

"What do you want to do?" Katie asked softly, so as not to wake all of the other sleeping girls.

"We could watch another movie," Kayla suggested but Katie shook her head.

"No, we'll wake everyone else up, including my dad; the man has the hearing of a bat and when he's on a mission, like he is tonight, he sleeps really lightly. "

The three girls thought for a minute. "We could go up to your room and-" Ashley was interrupted by the shaking of Katie's head.

"I promised my dad that we would stay on this floor tonight."

"Your dad sure has a lot of rules," Ashley grumbled.

"Well, we already froze Jane's bra and Maddie's hand is in a bowl of warm water…why don't we go into the bathroom and do more makeovers on each other again?" Kayla suggested.

Katie and Ashley nodded their agreement at the suggestion and the three of them made their way to the bathroom off of the living room. After a few minutes, Ashley sighed. "This is lame, we already did this."

"Well what else _can _we do?" Kayla asked. "It's like four-thirty in the morning."

"I do have _one _thing we could try," Katie hemmed. "I'll be right back, I have to go up and get it." With that, she rushed up the stairs quietly, went into her bathroom and grabbed the box she had hidden behind a box of tampons, so her dad wouldn't see it if he decided to go snooping. She went back downstairs, re-entered the bathroom and handed the box to Ashley.

"Blonde hair dye!" She exclaimed as she studied the box. "I didn't know you had it in you, Rossi."

"I don't," she admitted. "I've had that box for a few months but I've never gotten up the courage to use it."

"So you wanna do it tonight?" Kayla asked, shocked that her friend was going to alter her appearance so drastically. She was Katie's best friend so she knew how her dad would react and she knew it wouldn't be pretty. Thankfully, her friend seemed to realize that as well.

"God no!" She exclaimed. "I don't really want my dad to shave my head tomorrow and I'm sure he would do just that if I emerged from my sleeping bag as a blonde in the morning. No, I thought maybe one of you would want to use it."

"Not me," Ashley said, shaking her head. "I love being a redhead."

"And my dad would kill me just as much as yours would," Kayla told her.

"Then what can we do with it?" Katie wondered out loud. The three of them scrunched up their faces in thought for a few minutes until inspiration struck Katie's mind. Quickly leaving the bathroom, she stopped in the kitchen before heading back into the living room.

"Mudgie," she whispered. The dog, who was taking advantage of the confusion of the slumber party, was quite comfy sleeping in his master's recliner. He cracked an eyelid when he heard his name and then quickly closed it again.

"Mudgie," Katie tried again, "Treat!" THAT woke the chocolate lab up and he bounded off of the chair to collect his milk bone. When he got within reach of his teen mistress, she handed him the dog biscuit and then grabbed his collar and dragged him into the bathroom.

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Four hours later, Dave awoke to heavy breathing in his face. "God Mudgie, go breathe somewhere else!" He snapped. While he was normally an early riser, Dave hadn't fallen asleep until around four and that sleep was punctuated with loud giggles and girls moving around in the living room. To say his sleep had been light and interrupted would have been a big understatement and, as a result, he wasn't too anxious to get out of his makeshift bed. Unfortunately, his dog had other ideas. Moving closer to Dave, he gave him a wet doggy kiss right across his mouth.

"Jesus Christ Mudge, I'm up!" Dave sat bolt upright in bed and frantically wiped his sleeve across his mouth, trying to remove as much of the dog spit as possible. When he finished, he got his first good look at his faithful hunting companion and his eyes widened in surprise; the dog's back claws were painted a hot pink while his front claws were an electric blue. He had ribbons done all over his fur and, oh my God, his fur! Mudgie's back, sides and the top of his head all had blonde streaks. As he stared at his miserable looking dog, Dave couldn't help but guffaw in laughter; with the blonde tipped fur, Mudgie looked like one of the Backstreet Boys! He tried getting his laughter under control when his dog shot him a look that told him he was moments away from being ripped apart, but it was a losing battle. Still chuckling, Dave left the study with Mudgie following him. Once in the kitchen, he put the dog's collar on him and then the two of them made their way to the living room.

As he entered the room, Dave was amazed at how haphazardly the girls were spread out on the floor; it looked like a mass casualty incident had occurred, minus the blood. As he gingerly stepped around the sleeping teenagers, he felt like he was playing that goddamned dance game that had nearly broken his hip. He finally reached the patio door, let the dog out and then went back into the kitchen.

Thirty minutes later, breakfast was ready. He'd made the girls scrambled eggs, bacon, hash browns and fruit salad, along with orange and apple juices. He knew parents would be arriving in the next hour and he didn't want to send his charges home on empty stomachs. Still feeling a bit peeved at the way the noise from the living room had kept him up for most of the night, he decided to exact a little bit of revenge. Grabbing a metal pot lid and a wooden spoon, he quietly walked to the middle of the living room and then began banging the spoon against the lid.

"Rise and shine, ladies," he said loudly, reminding himself of his Marine days. The second the wooden spoon had hit the metal, all eight girls had shot up into sitting positions and now most of them were rubbing sleep out of their eyes.

"Holy crap dad, we're up! You can stop banging the lid now!"

Dave banged it once more before setting it down on the coffee table…the coffee table that was now littered with empty cans, makeup, bags of chips and iPods. "It's nine o'clock and breakfast is ready in the kitch-" At the mention of food, all of the kids jumped up from the floor and nearly knocked him over to get to the kitchen. He let Mudgie back in and then stood at the doorway to the kitchen, not wanting to get involved in the teenage frenzy.

"Ooooh, Mudgie!" Jane cooed, "You're so pretty!" Katie caught her dad's eye when her friend said that.

"Sorry dad, but you _did_ tell us to use Mudgie as a model. It was either him or me."

"You're lucky it wasn't you, otherwise your scalp and my clippers would've been meeting today," he told her, dead seriously.

"See! I told you," Katie exclaimed to Ashley and Kayla. All three girls grinned as they looked at their four-legged masterpiece.

"We just wanted to see what he would look like as a yellow lab," Ashley said.

Dave just shook his head and watched the girls eat. "Um, Mr. Rossi? Do you have any ice for the juice?" Maddie asked.

"Sure honey," Dave replied as he went to the freezer. To his surprise, when he opened the door, two frozen bras fell out of it. "Ahem," he said as he picked up the lingerie. "May I ask why there are undergarments in my freezer?" He set the clothing pieces down on the counter and they were quickly snatched up by Jane and Rachel.

"I can't _believe_ you guys did that!" Rachel exclaimed as she held her bra close to her in order to thaw it out.

"Hey, it's not our faults that the two of you fell asleep first," Maddie said as she accepted the ice from Dave. "Besides, _someone_ put my hand in a bowl of warm water." Jane turned red at the accusation and Maddie nodded knowingly. "Uh huh, that's what I thought. I'd say we're even."

Dave just shook his head as he watched and listened to the exchange. Bras in the freezer? He would never understand teenage girls.

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Katie yawned widely as she finished washing the dishes from the previous night; her dad said he would help her do them later in the day, but since she was one of the main reasons he hadn't slept much the previous night, she figured she would be nice and do them without his help. She started the dishwasher and then went into the living room, where she found her dad sitting on the sofa with a book in his hands. As she got closer to him, she could see he was dozing and his reading glasses were about to fall off the end of his nose. She snapped a picture, because he looked cute, and then went to take his glasses off, knowing that if he broke them, he wouldn't be able to read anything until he got a new pair. The moment she reached for his face though, he gently grabbed her wrist.

"I'm awake," he said, but the sleep in his voice and his closed eyes said otherwise.

"Yeah, right," Katie said as she sat down next to him. He put his arm around her and she snuggled in to his side. "I got everything cleaned up," she said nervously.

"I'm sensing a 'but' in that sentence," he told her as he cracked one eye open.

"Um, I have to show you something, but you're probably going to get mad."

With both eyes open, Dave looked down at her. "What is it?"

Katie reached down next to her and moved her sleeping bag to reveal a discolored spot on the carpet. Funnily enough, it was about the size of Mudgie's back.

"What happened?" Dave asked as he stared at the floor.

"I thought we'd rinsed Mudgie off enough but I guess we didn't. He slept here last night and when I woke up today, I noticed this huge stain," she said in a rush as she got more worked up. "I'm _so _sorry dad! I'll get a job after school to pay for new carpeting and until then I'll do a bunch of extra chores and-"

Dave knew he should be pissed at her; he should lecture her about taking better care of their things and he should accept her offer of working after school and doing extra chores bu the truth was, he was still touched by he had overheard the previous night; the fact that she felt so close to him, that she knew she could come to him for anything. So with that in mind, he showed mercy on her and didn't let her finish. "Katie, do you really think this is the first time you've stained the carpet in here?"

Her dad's lack of anger over the ruined carpet confused the teen, as did his question. "Yeah, I thought it was."

"Trust me honey, it isn't. For whatever reason, whenever you make a mess, you tend to do it in this room, on this floor. I first had to replace the carpet in here when you were nine months old. Your mom was out shopping and I'd just given you a bath when the phone rang. You were only in your diaper since it was a warm May day and I set you down on the floor while I answered the phone. During my three minute phone call, you managed to get your diaper off and then you used your newly acquired crawling skills and you made a few laps around the room; of course you were pooping and peeing at the same time and you left a nice little trail."

"Daaaaad," Katie said, turning red, "That's _so _embarrassing!"

"Hey, be thankful I didn't tell this story last night in front of all of your friends," he told her with a grin. "Anyway, not only did you decorate the carpet with your bodily functions, but you also managed to pull down everything within reach, and that included the soda I had on the coffee table and a small houseplant. I came in and found you asleep in the middle of a giant mess."

"I think you're making that up," she mumbled, her face still red.

"Then there was the time when you were in Kindergarten when you had a bad stomach virus. Your mother set you up on the sofa with a nice big bucket on the floor in case you got sick…I think you missed that bucket every time!"

"I remember that; you came home early from a book tour that night."

"Yeah, well, your mother was in tears over the carpet _and _she'd caught the bug from you, so the last thing she needed was to deal with a sick five year old," Dave told her. "And then there was the time you decided to build a volcano, ala Brady Bunch, right here in the living room."

Katie groaned, "I think she nearly disowned me for that. I honestly considered running to Aaron and Hailey's house for a little bit while she cooled off, but I figured that would've pissed her off even more."

"You're right; finding her nine year old daughter missing would've definitely increased your mother's anger and frustration. We not only had to replace the carpeting that time, but we also had to repaint the walls. You're lucky you saw daylight within a year after that."

"I remember giving mom a wide berth for many days," Katie agreed as she leaned back against him.

"So you see honey, this isn't the first time you've wrecked the carpet, but it will be the last; I think I'm gonna put hard wood floors in here."

"You're sure you're not mad?" The teen asked hesitantly.

Dave kissed the top of her head as he tightened his grip on her. 'Nope," he said drowsily as sleep threatened to overtake him again. "I knew what I was signing up for when I let you have your slumber party. Speaking of which, are we doing this again for your birthday?" Thankfully her birthday wasn't for another eight months, so he had time to prepare.

"No," Katie said sleepily, as she also began to doze. "I want to have a boy/girl party for my birthday."

With that, Dave was wide awake. A boy/girl party? He didn't know which type of party was worse, but he had a horrible feeling he would find out.

**The End**


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